Counting Whiskers
by JessenoSabaku
Summary: He lit a cinnamon-scented candle to light the haunted room of his heart, and on a bookshelf he made space for a makeshift photo frame with the picture of the only person who could relate. Oneshot. Gaara centric. Implications of Naruto's presence. K .


**Disclaimer: None of Naruto is mine. Go out and buy the anime and manga, for it is awesome. This is just a little piece done for fun and writing critique, so don't sue and/or hurt me with large, pointy sticks. Now, enjoy yourself.**

Gaara spent what seemed like an eternity in the never-ending darkness that was his own heart. Lights came and went, but they were on the outside of the bubble he'd trapped himself in with the guarding wall he constructed that he called "despair." It was a wall that soothed him in a crazy way, assuring him that no one would reach the inside of his heart, feel around in it, then decide it was boring and rip the still-beating organ from his chest. That inky absence of the sun's rays made up his days and nights, his functions and his ways of life, and the beast that lurked within.

He was dragged kicking and screaming from that sanctuary out into a world so bright that it made him blind and mad with rage and regret. It filled him with wonder and made him pause and think back on that black, peaceful place and see it for the torture chamber it really was. It showed him that his peace was one that could not be achieved without him being shut away. It also required the eradication of all those who tried to intrude—all those lights that attempted to come and set his heart ablaze. That place was filled with the blackness of one who does not exist unless everyone else ceases to.

It truly was the opposite of what he'd wanted to see his pathetic past turn out to be.

The real world drove him to the brink of a kind of insanity worse than what his old pitch-black home led him to experience. Grains of the hot desert sands of his homeland caressed his form day in and day out with the friendliness of nature that comes with good weather. It was a caress that he received from no one—not his mother, not his father, and not even his uncle who tried to play his part and played it well all except for a few little things, including this. At times he wanted to bat those sandy hands away and ask them if they really wanted to hold him, but he'd then realize that those hands weren't even hands and that he was talking with the dust. He was still all alone.

Those who were used to the outside world saw a monster within him that he couldn't deny. He talked with and fought that monster every day. Sometimes he even embraced it and pretended for a little while that it was his friend, and he felt alright in his little dysfunctional, happy family of two. But it got lonely and the stares became heavy. The whispers got louder and his heart ached increasingly more with each passing day. He and himself were not enough anymore, so his arms started to reach for those that backed away, hoping to reach them before they disappeared out of sight.

_Don't leave me alone. Can't you see what this prison has done to me? Come hold me for once—just once is all I ask. Just hold me one time—forever should suffice as a time limit._

Gaara could've stepped blissfully over the ledge and gone back to that sweet, unmistakable, poisonous pit. But instead he decided to count the whiskers on the cheeks of the one who'd lit a lantern for him inside his protective barrier so he could find the door that led to the outside. He envisioned blue eyes that showed him just how desirable the sunlight could be. He shook hands with the strong arms that wrenched him from the coffin he'd made for himself, even when he felt comfortable lying in it.

He lit a cinnamon-scented candle to light the haunted room of his heart, and on a bookshelf he made space for a makeshift photo frame with the picture of the only person who could relate—the only one who made his rehabilitation worthwhile. It served as not only a reminder, but a warning to the monster that he once was. He would not give up and he would never go back.

His freedom would remain as long as he could trace the whiskers through the glass. For the time being, that was all that mattered.


End file.
